Re: Ice age, plate tectonics and PIE

From: Daniel J. Milton
Message: 19720
Date: 2003-03-12

Kalyan, can you be more specific as to what you have in mind?
I suppose you are thinking about significantly different
geographies because of coastline advance or retreat. A general
answer is that since the end of the last glacial period 12 or 13
thousand years ago, worldwide sea level changes have been small, a
matter of meters rather than tens of meters. Greater changes did
occurr in formerly glaciated areas and in a nearby belt because of
isostatic readjustment (flow of subcrustal material in response to
ice unloading). If the Indo-Europeans arrived by 4-5000 BC they may
have been able to walk to England. Tectonic changes are lesser and
would be more localized. The Himalayas are undoubtedly rising, but
I doubt that the effects would be noticeable at any coastline.
The one seriously proposed shoreline change that might have had
a significant effect on Indo-European origins is the one proposed in
Pitman et al.'s "Noah's Flood" book, where the Mediterranean broke
through the straits and flooded a supposed sub-sealevel freshwater
predecessor of the Black Sea (I believe someone brought this up on
Cybalist a while ago). However, there was a paper by a Turkish
group in the journal Geology last year (I can check the ref. if
anyone wants it) that demolished the theory. Essentially, they
demonstrated (to my satisfaction at least) that through the time
when Pitman would have a mighty cataract pouring northward,
sediments in the Sea of Marmara were quietly prograding southward.
Of course there are local changes in shorelines,where deltas
advance, or in volcanic areas such as the Bay of Naples, where
inflating and deflating magma chambers lift or drop the surface.
But the idea of civilizations lost beneath the waves, although it
seems to have an amazing appeal through the ages and around the
World, finds no support in geology.
Dan

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "S.Kalyanaraman" <kalyan97@...>
wrote:
> Will the following surmise have an effect on the spread of PIE
> languages prior to Eurasian de-glaciation, say, 10000 carbon-14
> years ago?
>
> Kalyan
>
> "Plate tectonics is an important process influencing when ice ages
> occur, and the position of the continents is probably one of the
> most important factors controlling long periods of multiple
> glaciations....Over the past 15 million years, the continents have
> risen about 600 meters (2000 feet) on average. The uplift of the
> Himalayas and the Tibetian Plateau probably contributed to the
> initiation of the current cool period."
>
>
http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/ice_ages/why_4_cool_periods.ht
> ml
>
> http://pubs.usgs.gov/publications/text/himalaya.html